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Credit: DisneyLess than two weeks after its release, Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) has broken an unwanted record for a Disney live-action remake.
Available exclusively on Disney+, Peter Pan & Wendy joins a score of films inspired by JM Barrie’s 1904 play “Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.” Like every other version, it follows the eternally-youthful Peter Pan as he takes Wendy, John, and Michael Darling to Neverland – an island filled with pirates, mermaids, and fairies where children never have to grow up.
Disney’s remakes rarely debut to an entirely positive reception. As of Peter Pan & Wendy, it’s remade 21 of its animated classics, leading to (very valid) accusations of dwindling creativity and a lack of originality from the studio.
Reactions to Peter Pan & Wendy are no exception. From the first trailer, audiences have accused the live-action adaptation of sucking the color and joy found in Peter Pan (1953) in favor of a grey, gloomy, “realistic” aesthetic.
Now that the film’s out in the world, audiences are even more disappointed – leading to the film ranking as the lowest-rated Disney live-action remake on Rotten Tomatoes.
As of May 10, Peter Pan & Wendy has an audience score of just 13% on the film ratings website.
This follows a plethora of bad reviews across multiple websites, with the film review-bombed in the early days of its release for being “charmless” and “politically correct.”
Peter Pan & Wendy fared better with critics, who’ve given it an average score of 64% – although their reviews are also plagued with critiques that it “never masks the redundancy of Disney’s remake formula” and is “both visually and narratively uninteresting.”
The film now ranks as one of just two live-action Disney remakes with an audience score under 45%, the first being Pinocchio (2022), which scored just 28% amid complaints about its “eerie” CGI and “weird mash of random modern pop culture references.”
Regardless of public sentiment, the Disney remake train isn’t stopping any time soon. The latest addition to its lineup, The Little Mermaid (2023), is due for release on May 26, with remakes of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Lilo & Stitch (2002), and Hercules (1997) also on the way. Hopefully, they’re on track to break more positive records – which, considering the outpour of love for Halle Bailey as Ariel in the first reactions to The Little Mermaid, doesn’t seem impossible.